Oh Paula Dean, how I envy you sometimes. Unbound by concerns for health or ethical food, you blazenly start every dish with butter, sugar, and shortening. You laugh in the face of high cholesterol and heart disease when you add bacon to everything. You’ve never met a fry daddy you didn’t love. To be clear, I love Paula Dean, and I have read from more than one source that she doesn’t eat her signature food all the time. I believe her, because if she did, she would way 800 pounds and she does not. I also have to give Paula credit, because all of her recipes perfectly capture the audacity of American southern cooking. Naturally, when I wanted to make authentic beignets for Christmas Breakfast, I turned to the master. I took Paula’s recipe for cafe do monde beignets and appropriately veganized it. It was fairly straightforward, and I think that you can achieve good results with the following steps.

1. Replace the eggs with egg replacer powder and pre-mix it before adding to the evaporated milk.

2. To make evaporated soy milk, take 2 cups of soy milk and bring them to a simmer. Let it boil on the stove for 20 minutes, or until it reduces to half its original size.

3. For god’s sake, cut this recipe in half, because even then it made over 2 dozen beignets, and they do not reheat or keep well.